Thursday, August 25, 2022

More evidence of how inflation is destroying America from within. Is it deliberate?

 

A recent headline reads:  "A ‘Tsunami of Shutoffs’: 20 Million US Homes Are Behind on Energy Bills".


The Nice household is one of some 20 million across the country—about 1 in 6 American homes—that have fallen behind on their utility bills. It is, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada), the worst crisis the group has ever documented. Underpinning those numbers is a blistering surge in electricity prices, propelled by the soaring cost of natural gas ... more and more people are facing a choice among food, housing, and keeping the power on. “I expect a tsunami of shutoffs,” says Jean Su, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, which tracks utility disconnections across the US.

. . .

The average price consumers pay for electricity surged 15% in July from a year earlier, the biggest 12-month increase since 2006. Regulation of electricity rates makes it hard for providers to immediately pass on higher fuel costs, so the recent hikes may be just the start ... US households owe about $16 billion in late energy bills, double the pre-pandemic total, according to Neada. The average balance owed has climbed 97% since 2019, to $792. “The bills just aren’t affordable,” says Mark Wolfe, Neada’s executive director. “People on the bottom, they can’t pay this.”


There's more at the link.

My wife and I are noticing the same thing.  We're paying about 30% more for electricity at present than we were a year ago.  I'm sure most of our readers have noticed the problem.  It's not confined to the USA alone, either - it's all over the world.  The price of natural gas, essential for the generation of electricity, has skyrocketed, and as a result the price of the electricity produced using it has done the same.  Here in the USA, the local price of natural gas has done likewise, because producers have redirected much of their natural gas to the European market, where they can get much higher prices and make a much larger profit.

Sundance points out:


Already struggling with a doubling of gas prices, massive food price increases at the grocery store and the pain of all costs for goods far outpacing any rate of wage increase, this type of uncontrollable increase in price of electricity is going to hit the middle class hard.

Steve Cortes calls this the backside of the Biden created inflation hurricane.  The backside of a hurricane is the worst because it hits from the opposite direction upon already weakened infrastructure.

The hurricane metaphor is apt because any increase in energy costs will be accompanied by the simultaneous arrival of another wave of food inflation, as the massive increases in field and crop prices start to feed into the food supply chain headed to our forks next month.

. . .

One in six U.S. households, that is tens-of-millions of Americans, are now facing having their electricity turned off due to lack of payment.  It is certainly understandable how this horrific outcome would happen. Joe Biden’s energy policies are destroying working class families with unsustainably higher prices.

20 million households is a catastrophic level of utility default.  This is a serious issue with major social implications created by the desperation of those families.  Middle- and lower-income families cannot survive this level of financial pressure.

Rents are behind. Mortgages are behind.  Car payments are behind. And now this report on utility bills.


Again, more at the link.

And, in the middle of all this, the Biden administration has just committed $300 billion (which we don't have - it'll all have to be borrowed) to pay down student loan balances.  A more fiscally ridiculous, budgetarily insane, economically short-sighted decision would be hard to imagine... and just think of the inflationary pressures it will release on its own, even without considering other examples of government overreach and irresponsible expenditure.

Financial site Quoth The Raven observes that "Inflation Is Quietly Stripping Us Of Our Private Property Rights".


I had to look no further than my own personal circle to find recent examples of grown adults who were having difficulty making ends meet due to rising prices. These people had some money saved up, but still could not keep up with the price of rent and housing, and ultimately wound up giving up on having their own place and moving back home with their parents ... everyone is having the same problem: they simply can’t afford things anymore and, with inflation at between 8% and 9%, the value of their savings is collapsing.

In just 3 years, things cost between 15% and 20% more than they did when many savers were putting away a majority of their money - before the pandemic. The purchasing power of the dollar is down by about 20% over the same time.

Those who are still working on a wage that isn’t 20% higher than it was just 3 years ago are losing significant ground. Those who have stopped working and are either on a fixed income or are living off savings have been hit even worse...

. . .

We hear the news talk about a slowdown in spending all the time when economic times get tougher - it’s one of the dynamics that creates recession and de-leveraging cycles. But what happens when it’s the cost of shelter (i.e. rent and housing) and real estate that are also getting too expensive for everyday buyers. This is talked about far less, so let’s quickly think about what it could mean for the future ... everything will be communal and shared. The focus will be taken away from private property and private property rights.

Inflation helps this narrative greatly. If you have less purchasing power to buy discretionary items then, by proxy, you have less private property.

. . .

I now can’t help but think of inflation as a way to help strip away people’s individual private property rights. When you take away a person’s private property, private property rights don’t hold the same meaning to them ... If you could afford 8% more “stuff” last year with the same dollar, what type of mental gymnastics do you need to perform to convince yourself that your rights to private property aren’t being whittled away and taken out from underneath you?


More at the link.

Remember Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum?  This is their vision of a future Utopia.




Just imagine how unaffordable electricity could play into making that happen.

"You can't afford power?  Well, we, the benevolent State, can supply you with all you need!  However, we'll decide how much you need, and if you exceed that limit, we'll cut you off.  Still, let's not worry about that.  All that's needed is your obedient submission to our dictates."

Fancy that?  No, I didn't think you would - and neither do I.

International Man notes that many of these concepts can be directly traced back to Nazi and Fascist ideology.


For many years following the war, Nazi concepts remained under the radar, but in recent years, they’ve become a major force within not only the US, but also US ally states: Canada, Australia, the UK and, most notably, the EU.

The basic concepts are perennial in their attraction to those who seek to dominate:

1.  Create an uber class of those who are highly positioned in both industry and politics.

2.  Cripple the middle class economically, so that they no longer have the power to make their own life decisions.

3.  Offer dramatically increased dependency on the State as a relief from the economic hardship created by the state.

4.  Remove freedoms, in trade for the promise of largesse from the State.

5.  Institute a police state and totalitarian rule to ensure that the new paradigm will be lasting.

6.  Once controls are fully implemented and the populace has become dependent on the new system, begin to remove the promised entitlements.

The idea behind this final bullet point is that, once the population is thoroughly dependent upon the state, they will have lost the power to object or rebel if entitlements are removed. They are then fully dominated.


More at the link.  It's well worth reading their article in full.

Note the emphasis I provided for points 2 and 3 above.  Do the drastic increase in our electricity bills, and our inflationary environment in general, have any correlation to that?  I think they do.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  As if on cue, via links at Instapundit we find these two articles:


Rent Forever and Love It


Looks like I'm not alone in seeing the trend . . .


16 comments:

TheAxe said...

Yeah I'm already cutting back on discretionary spending in anticipation of higher propane costs for heating this winter. Hoping for only a 150% increase but given what Biden and the greenies are doing to fuel prices I don't want to get caught out if it's even more.

Rick T said...

We are moving into a house with propane and got the flyer for our supplier's prepay program to lock in the price for the heating season. The price doubled from last year.

JG said...

There has been food plants destroyed, higher costs for seeds, fuel, and less energy plants. This is all to increase costs to people and make everything harder. Less food will be available and likely less power will be available. This will make everyone upset. If the USA continues on this path CW2 will be on the horizon.

Old NFO said...

Food and power deserts are coming... This winter may be 'extra' interesting.

Skwab said...

Of Course it is deliberate.
All of this is planned.

Michael Downing said...

Our electric company is a relatively small local co-op and our costs from this year to last haven't increased more than 5-10% but we have made cut backs in usage and I haven't checked per kilowatt costs to compare. We did have our underground propane tank filled within the last month and the cost was around $3.59 per gallon. As long as we do not haven unusual prolonged electric outages which means the whole house generator takes over the propane fill up lasts approximately 18 months. Usual usage of the generator included in what is considered normal is 5-6 times at 2-4 hours usage and one time of about 10-12 hours. That means our average per month cost for propane will be about $66.00 per month over the next 18 months. Cost beyond that time is anyone's guess.

As to your question: Is it deliberate? I surely take that as a rhetorical question. No one with eyes that can see, ears that can hear and a mind that can think would survey everything that has happened over the past 2 years and come to any other conclusion. We are witnessing the Cloward-Piven strategy in motion. Over load the system so it collapses and replace with whatever socialist utopia that is the current "this time it will work" socialist agenda you have in mind.

Bottom line is that the crap has already hit the fan, the collapse is well underway and the best you can do is prepare as best you can for the final fall. We haven't hit bottom yet and there will be no soft landing. Buckle your seat belts...

Peteforester said...

Your electric rates only went up 30%??? Our illustrious "governor" Newsom decreed that half of all of California's power was to come from "renewables." This was, of course, impossible, so now over 26% of our electricity must be purchased from outside the state, at MUCH higher cost than our own clean burning natgas plants used to produce before the were summarily shut down. Ironically, much of that purchased power is coming from coal-fired plants!
...Our electric rates are 60% HIGHER than they were this time last year! This is the same idiot who decreed that all cars in California must be "zero-emission" by 2035, and outlawed the sale of all small engine-powered equipment... including generators... as of 1/1/23. Yup; it all has to be electric. The generators have to be propane or "renewable."

Folks, "going green" means your "green is going."

...Anyone thinking Newsom would make a good president needs to be tied down and medicated until after the 2024 election!!!!! I do not say that in jest!

~Katherine~ said...

If I may, as someone who is of the generation whose student loans are getting paid down...
On the one hand, this is beyond criminally stupid on a national economic level.
On the other, what I would LOVE to see--but of course will never happen--would be to see the *schools* lose out on that money rather than the American taxpayers. Make the schools actively invested in having their students get good jobs, in that they don't get paid unless/until the students/alumns are employed and so on, and...whoooeeee, methinks the grossly overinflated tuition bills would get trimmed. Because this student loan/overinflated educational cost situation is totally out of hand (as one could predict, given the essential .gov subsidization of higher ed at this point, who'da thunk?).
My father, born in the mid-40s, was able to put himself through a private college by working, and, I grant, working very hard, at a summer job, and graduated with no debt.
I put myself through mostly public college (last years at a fairly inexpensive private school due to proximity) by working 35-50 hours/week, every week, at a hodgepodge of manual labor/retail/work-study jobs. I lived off campus in the middle of Gang Central, drove a 15-20 year old beater, and ate mostly bean soups and homemade bread and such. I graduated with 30K in debt. Now, I took that on...but I couldn't have gotten a better job without the degree, even though I didn't need, on a practical level, the degree for my job.
When Baby Sis went to college some years after I did, she was in a similar situation of paying her way through while working. After doing all she could at community college, she transferred to an in-state uni. Got her first bill, found it higher than she expected by a good bit, and went up to campus to demand an itemized version. Among other fluff, there was a $1,000 "Student Fitness Center Fee" on there that was, you guessed it, a membership to the campus gym. Quoth she, "I don't want the damn thing. If I want a gym membership, I'll pay $10/month to Planet Fitness. Take. It. Off." Nope, it's mandatory, so just add another few grand to the total cos after all, it's "just" loans. *eye roll*
TL:DR version: paying down all those loans is stupid, appalling, and a great accelerator along the currency-to-toilet-paper timeline we're looking at. However, colleges and universities need to be held accountable and we need to stop subsidizing them so damn much, because at this point it's near-impossible to get through without a good chunk of debt if you don't have mommy and daddy paying or the GI bill (which I 100% support), and the catch-22 is, if you're unlikely to get hired in the trades (petite woman), you'll likely need to go to college to get a better-than-retail job. I didn't mind working so hard through school. I really minded working that hard, pulling a 4.0 many semesters, living as I did, only to *still* walk out with that much in loans to ensure that I ever could live at a better standard than I was. That's just obnoxious.

Feather Blade said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Feather Blade said...

I'm honestly confused about how this debt forgiveness is going to cost taxpayers anything.

The federal government holds the student loan debt.
The feds are the lender, the feds receive all payments and interest, with a cut for the companies that manage the loans.
If a lender suddenly tells a debtor, "You don't owe this part of your debt anymore", that mean that the debt disappears. It doesn't get paid from some other source. It just goes away, because the entity who is owed the money has decided to take the loss of any future repayments. It works that way at all levels.

And then the amount forgiven gets counted as income to the former debtor and the IRS taxes them on it, because our government is asshoe.

If anything, since the value of our money is based on how much debt the feds can issue without breaking things, reducing the outstanding debt that the feds are lenders for will reduce their ability in increase the money supply.

Of course, I am aware that government entities, especially in this administration, are capable of screwing up even something as simple as this, but even so...

Michael Downing said...

I actually just went online to check my electric usage and cost over the past year and I was mistaken earlier. My bill has gone up just over 5% this August compared to last August but my cost per kilo watt hour has come down. I paid last August a cost of $0.0992 per kilowatt hour and this month's bill reflected a cost of $0.0922 per kilowatt hour. Which if my math is correct is approximately a 7% decrease in electric cost per kilowatt hour so the increase in cost comes not from an increase in cost but an increase in usage. We not only get excellent service from our small mountain co-op but seems reasonable pricing all things considered.

Peteforester said...

WOW! .09/KwH??? Mine is .21/KwH SUPER OFF-PEAK. Peak, hours, which run from 4:00pm to 9:00pm, that's right, the time when you CAN'T HELP but use electricity, cost .51/KwH!!! Everything was less than HALF this last year. Newsom waved his magic wand and POOF! 60% increase!!! Of course, this "legislation" went on in the dark in Sacramento, not seeing the light of day until it was on Newsom's desk. THIS is the Pelosi legacy at work...

Brother PIlot said...

Makes me glad we payed off the house, owe no one anything, and we have a huge garden (mostly due to my wife's efforts...she loves gardening) with quite a bit of food stored away.

And yes, I think this (inflation, energy shortages, etc) is all a deliberate tearing down of the USA by TPTB. Grind down, isolate, offer relief...lather rinse repeat.

Michael Downing said...

Peteforester our July statement broke down our usage to an daily average use to 85 kWh per day with an average cost of $7.90 per day. This area in the mountains of NC has many and the small local electric co-op is just one of them. Good folks who mind their own business but keep an eye out for their neighbors is another. That's a big plus when your nearest neighbor is a half mile to one and a half miles away.

I'm glad we totally heat our house with wood and have plenty of wooded acreage to harvest that wood from. It can get cold herein the mountains during the winter and it looks like a long hard winter ahead.

KevinM said...

I am with MS Power Co. a part of Southern Co. mine comes in at about .14/kw average use 63kw/day.What was it last year kw/hr no idea ATTM the bill is not off enough to make me question it.This is all by design by what I call the Evil Cabal POS of our elected officials in tandem with WEF/WHO.

PeterW said...

Peter.
Those strategies you list aren’t limited to the National Socialists.
They are SOP for all forms of Socialism.

I get very tired or the myth that the NAZIs were somehow uniquely different from the International Socialism of Soviet Russia and China.... and which is still being espoused today by a plethora of academics and power-hungry politicians.
The differences are trivial. Once you get past the symbols and slogans it is obvious that they are anything but opposites.